Minutes of a Monday #42
#minutesofamonday
Brain Food > More misinformation
“Due to the networked nature of the web, the amount of misinformation online has increased exponentially over the past two decades. And yet per capita real-world violence hasn’t even increased linearly; it has in fact dramatically decreased even when discounting the improvement in reporting of violence. Not only has violence not increased in the misinformation age, nor has the supposed intermediary between misinformation and real-world violence: conspiracy theories.
A recent Cambridge study analysed the data on misinformation and resulting misbehaviour and found a statistically insignificant correlation. The authors concluded that there was no evidence that misinformation leads to real-world harms.
But what about Russian election interference? What about Chinese spamouflage? Surely foreign influence operations are manipulating Western minds and causing people to adopt beliefs against their own interests? A recent longitudinal study analysed the effect of Russian disinformation operations on voter polarization during the 2016 US election and found that it had no appreciable impact.
It turns out people are stubborn in their beliefs, online (mis)information doesn’t easily change their minds, and even when it does, they don’t act on it, because, like most people, they have jobs and family to care about.
In short, there is no evidence that misinformation leads to a significant increase in conspiracy theories or real-world harms, and thus, building a sprawling surveillance and censorship apparatus to try to prevent outlier cases like January 6th is so expensive—in time, money, labor, and freedom—that it fails even the most generous cost-benefit analysis.
Put simply, the counter-misinformation complex was founded on misinformation.”
Soul Food
"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
LOL
The Big ‘Un on Political Correctness:
Appendix
“I’m constantly amazed by how easily we love ourselves above all others, yet we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own estimation of self…How much credence we give to the opinions our peers have on us and how little to our very own!”
Marcus Aurelius
AOB
Article #5 on ‘The mid 40’s ache for cosmic specialness’ landed in your inboxes last Friday. Have a great week ya’ll - Niall